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Wednesday, March 4, 2015

Review: Cinder (Lunar Chronicles #1)

Title: Cinder (Lunar Chronicles #1)Author: Marissa Meyer390 pages, published January 2012Genre: YA, Science Fiction, Fairytale RetellingSource: LibraryFrom Goodreads:Humans and androids
crowd the raucous streets of New Beijing. A deadly plague ravages the
population. From space, a ruthless lunar people watch, waiting to make
their move. No one knows that Earth’s fate hinges on one girl.

Cinder,
a gifted mechanic, is a cyborg. She’s a second-class citizen with a
mysterious past, reviled by her stepmother and blamed for her
stepsister’s illness. But when her life becomes intertwined with the
handsome Prince Kai’s, she suddenly finds herself at the center of an
intergalactic struggle, and a forbidden attraction. Caught between duty
and freedom, loyalty and betrayal, she must uncover secrets about her
past in order to protect her world’s future.My Review:I've been itching to get into a new series for awhile now, and the Lunar Chronicles is just what I was looking for! This book was fantastic!! By the title and cover, it's clearly a fairytale retelling, but it's so much more than that. This book can be a story on it's own independent of all the Cinderella parallels. The story is so creative!!I will admit it took me around 50 pages to really get into this book and get excited about it. The futuristic New Beijing world is so different that it takes you awhile to get your bearings and figure out what's going on (what is a cyborg??), but once you do you're hooked. After getting into it I couldn't put it down. I even went to the library to get the second book (Scarlet) so I could jump right in after finishing the first one.Beyond the creative futuristic world and creative story is the heart of this novel--Cinder. I absolutely LOVED her as a character. Cyborgs are treated as lesser citizens and even subjected to experimental medical testing. Cinder lives these struggles daily and struggles throughout the book to come to terms with her identity (don't want to give away any spoilers). She has a beautiful, real personality. This relatable quality is exactly why I love reading YA--though teens certainly aren't cyborgs, many may feel as different from others as Cinder does. Books like this allow them to relate.I highly recommend this book and cannot wait to jump into the next book in the series! If you have this one on your to-read list, I highly recommend reading it sooner rather than later, especially since Book #4 (Winter) is coming out this year!Overall rating for "Cinder": AHappy Reading!!